As a luminous substrate, zinc silicate (Zn2SiO4) exhibits a good chemical stability, environmental adaptability, good moisture resistance, ease of preparation, and low price, such that it has drawn much attention in the research of luminescent materials. In 1939, Jenkins, et al. discovered that Zn2+ ion and Mn2+ ion have the same valence state and approximate ionic radius, and Mn2+ ion can be well distributed in the lattice of Zn2SiO4 by X-ray, therefore manganese can be easily doped in the luminous substrate of Zn2SiO4.
Zinc manganese silicate (Zn2SiO4:Mn) is a high performance luminescent material, which has a high light intensive, color purity, and no near-infrared emission, such that it has been widely applied to some fields such as photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence. So far, the commercial zinc manganese silicate phosphor is prepared by solid phase method. However, the solid phase method suffers from some problems such as high synthesis temperature, difficulty in controlling the particle size and morphology, and requirement of grind of the product, which may cause surface damage and degradation of the luminescent properties, and contamination of the product. Therefore, in order to overcome the shortcomings caused by the solid phase method, some new synthetic methods have been extensively studied to synthetic zinc manganese silicate, such as sol-gel method, hydrothermal method and precipitation method.